Le Ciel Bleu
by pale-jonquil
Summary: Human AU. Arthur knows she's unhappy. He decides to fall in love with her anyway. She'd only have him, and he'd be all she would need. -trigger warnings/SPOILERS for depression and suicide-


**Le Ciel Bleu**

.

"_Oh! I have a joke for you."_

"_Do you?"_

"_Yes, just for you. I've been saving it for a while, waiting for just the right person to come along to tell it to. To find someone who can really appreciate it."_

"_I'm all ears, madam."_

"_Okay. Now, I'm not the best at telling jokes, but here goes. How many times does a Frenchman find the same story funny?"_

"_Erm — I'm not entirely sure."_

"_No — wait — oh, dear. I think I've ruined it already. Hold on, let me think."_

"_Would you mind terribly if I ordered us dessert whilst you're thinking?"_

"_Are you kidding? I love dessert. It's my favorite part of the meal. I wouldn't go out on a second date with you if you didn't buy me dessert on the first."_

* * *

When he asks her to be his girl, she leans away from him, puts a chilly space between them, and warns him not to think she's perfect. But Arthur's in the first excitable flush of love, drunk off her giggles and her perfume, so he doesn't pay her warning any heed. He only thinks her modest, and leans in to close the empty space she put between them.

She warns him again, when he tells her he loves her. She's got demons, she says. There are voices in her head.

Well, it's her _own_ voice, she quickly amends, noting the sharp way he turns his gaze upon her. It's her, but she's not sure who it _really_ is, really.

Maybe it's her conscience — it always nags at her as though she's done something wrong. As though she's broken something, swept away all the delicate little pieces that would give her away, but forgot where she hid them — she's going to be found out, and this terrifies her. She's tired of hiding, but she can't help feeling there's always something for her to hide.

Maybe it's a part of her she's buried and long forgotten, creeping out from where she shoved it and tried to forget about it (where it sat, stinking and rotting, for years and years and years). Maybe it's the her of the future — the strong, happy girl she knows she was meant to be. The girl she almost feels like when she's with him (but only sometimes).

Whatever or whoever it is, there's a ravenous ugliness screaming within her (and _without,_ she's sure — she can feel it creeping up behind her everywhere she goes), and sometimes she doesn't know what to do with it or herself. She loves to laugh, and laughter does help, but it only masks the pain for a time, doesn't cure the ill or kill it.

(She tells him she's tried to _kill_ the pain before, and gives him a meaningful look, prays he understands what she's trying to tell him.)

She resists him at first, tries to ignore the way her heart answers the call of his own, but he convinces her with soft caresses and warm kisses. They become inseparable.

* * *

"_Is that Eddie Izzard I hear?"_

"_The man himself. Shall I turn it up so you can hear it in the kitchen?"_

"_No, forget the dishes, I'm coming out there to watch it with you."_

"_It's an older one, I believe he does Pierre in this one. Which reminds me — do you remember our first date, and the joke about the Frenchman you tried to tell me?"_

* * *

One night, she forgets to lock the bathroom door behind her, and he walks in on her as she holds a towel to her mouth and silently screams into it. He doesn't know what hurts more: Seeing her so upset, her body shaking with every clandestine sob, or the fact she felt the need to hide it from him. He gets sad and cries about things too, sometimes, after all. Everyone does.

He doesn't tell her to get over it, doesn't tell her there are people with worse problems in the world. He doesn't yell at her, doesn't demand to know why she can't be like everybody else. And, somehow, she's not surprised, because she always knew he was a good man.

Too good, almost, because he holds her and kisses her, rocks her back and forth in his arms, and for the first time since he said it to her, she tells him she loves him — and, _oh,_ how she loves him, how he makes her heavy heart soar. It doesn't know any of the words, but still, her heart sings and sings. She wants him to listen, wants him to know it's singing for him. Wants him to know her heart would have no other purpose were it not busy singing for him.

She thinks this might finally be it — the demons might finally leave her. She trembles, and she can't wait.

She drowns in his love, heavy and heady and every heartstring arching and aching. But eventually she's going to learn some emotions weigh more than others, and some things never let you go.

* * *

"_Of course I remember that joke. Let me try telling it again. Are you ready?"_

"_I've been ready for two years, madam."_

"_Alright. So — there's a Frenchman, a Spaniard, and an American. And — wait. Or is it a Frenchman, a Dutchman, and an Irishman? Stop laughing at me, Arthur, this isn't funny!"_

"_I beg to differ. I find it hilarious, and quite adorable."_

"_Shut up and watch your stupid Eddie Izzard. No! Stop! I don't want your kisses! I'm still mad at you for laughing at me. I reject any and all affection from you!"_

* * *

She used to buy sweets from the chocolatier downtown and make a fuss out of waiting until dinner was over and the dishes were washed and put away before relaxing at the end of the day and indulging herself. He used to know the way she'd close her eyes, throw her head back, and make the most sinful sound of pleasure this side of their bedroom when she finally bit into one.

She used to go on walks with him past the school and the park. He used to know the way she'd squeeze his hand when she saw two children being sweet to each other _("Baby, look! Those two kids didn't even know each other a few minutes ago, but now they're walking arm in arm together!")_ because, really, it's the little things in life, isn't it?

Arthur would have fought it if he could, but it's well past the beginning of the end. He doesn't know it, but they're already wandering, lost, in the thick of it.

(Marie tried to warn him. She loves him, but _God,_ did she try.)

* * *

He comes home from work one evening and cautiously steps into their sweltering living room. He finds her sitting on her knees before the fireplace.

"It's the middle of summer, darling," he says, loosening his tie and unfastening the first two buttons of his shirt. "No time for a fire, I should think."

"I just — " She turns, distracted, but doesn't meet his eye. "I just wanted to feel _something,"_ she whispers.

"Sorry?" He walks to her and lays a hand upon her shoulder. Her shirt is drenched with sweat, her skin is on fire.

"Darling?" he asks, crouching beside her and gently turning her to face him. "What's going on? Are you ill? Did — did something happen?"

She shivers. "No, nothing happened." She finally meets his eyes then, and she's not smiling, but her lips do quirk oddly upward. "I'm just really, really glad you're home now."

* * *

"_Marie, I need to ask you something."_

"_No, I will not wear a maid's outfit for you. Stop asking."_

"_I — I've never asked you to do that! But…you wouldn't? Not even just once, on my birthday?"_

"_Can this wait, baby? I'm trying out a new muffin recipe, but I've got to keep an eye on them because I don't know how long to keep them in the oven for."_

"_This is…rather important. If I don't ask you now, when I've finally mustered up the courage, I'll never be able to ask it again."_

"_The recipe says ten minutes, but I don't see how that's right, the batter was so thick — "_

"_Damn it, Marie, I want you to marry me."_

"_You what?"_

"_I love you and I — I want you to marry me."_

"…_you don't want that."_

"_I beg your pardon, but I think I know best what it is I want."_

"_But — I'm a mess."_

"_Darling — "_

"_No, be serious for a minute. I am a mess. You know how I get sometimes, Arthur. But…you honestly make me so, so happy. The happiest I've ever been — the happiest I could ever be, I think. And it hurts that I can't make you happy, that I can't do the things for you that you do for me. I only make you pull at your hair and worry."_

"_No, that's not true — "_

"_You've seen me, sometimes. You know it's hard and you know it's not pretty. You're a good man and I don't want to drag you down, too. Maybe…maybe you should find someone who can — "_

"_Damn it, woman, I'm not perfect either, so I won't stand here and listen to you berate yourself a moment longer. You do make me happy. You don't see it, darling, but you do. I love you and it's totally mental, but I want nothing more than to spend the rest of my life waiting for you to get that sodding joke about the bloody Frenchman right for once. So — do say yes."_

"_Oh, no!"_

"_No? So…there's nothing I can do to persuade you otherwise, then?"_

"_No, I mean — yes, I'll marry you, but — the muffins! They're burning!"_

"_Hang the muffins. Come here…"_

* * *

"Why must you be so _dissatisfied_ with everything?" he yells one night. "Why is nothing good enough for you?"

He raises his voice sometimes, though he's never angry with her. He's only worried, frustrated — and lonely.

He throws up his hands and drops them heavily, defeated for the night.

"Why — why aren't _I_ good enough for you?"

* * *

She stays home more often than she should. She stops going for walks with him, stops visiting the chocolatier, and eventually she quits her job.

("God, I can't even _shelve books_ right. They must think I'm the biggest idiot in the world."

"Did anyone at the bookstore tell you they were displeased with your work?"

"Well…no."

"Then why did you think — "

"It's just a feeling I had. I know they were. I could feel it every time someone looked at me.")

Arthur doesn't mind her quitting her job — he makes enough for the two of them to get by — but it doesn't seem to make any change in her, the change they were both hoping for. She sleeps more, smiles less, and for as much as she says she needs him, she shrinks away from his touch.

She spends most of her time in their garden, little more than a sad patch of earth separating their cramped, crooked house from their neighbor's. Sometimes she brings a book out with her and reads, sitting cross-legged on a square of concrete and soaking up the sun like a cat. More often than not, though, she draws her knees up to her chest and waits it out as her thoughts darkly churn over and over in her head.

_How bad are her thoughts today?_ he'll wonder, because they're always bad. He knows now it's no longer a question of _if_ they're bad. Days are measured and compared against each other, and are always found wanting.

"Do you ever feel like you can't breathe, sometimes?" she asks him, rearranging a few of the large, heavy stones separating the two brittle roses from the three limp lilies. "Like there's a weight on you — like you're being held down and suffocated?"

"Sometimes," he admits, because everyone gets sad and cries from time to time, "but it eventually passes, darling."

"Not for me it doesn't. Though sometimes it's different. Sometimes, it's like there's a curtain in front of me. I can't see what's happening on the other side of the curtain, but that's not the point. I just want the curtain drawn back, is all, and it sounds simple but it's the hardest thing in the world."

(That's a new one. Last time she described it as though it were an echo haunting her everywhere she went, though she couldn't recall the first strike of that dastardly drum.)

He offers her his hand and hopes she'll reach out and take it. She does.

"Can you think of something, baby?" she quietly asks, and for all her sleeping, she still sounds tired. "I need _something _— something different and far away. I want to clear my head once and for all and just leave everything behind. Think of something for me, please."

Arthur suddenly remembers, then, a cottage in the country he used to pass on his way to school every day, built up with grey brick and protected by a low, ivy-covered stone wall. There was a garden to the side of the house, a river not far from the road, and a sheep farm not far off from the river.

He thinks it could be exactly what she needs — quiet, calm, soothing. Country air, dirt roads, damp clusters of trees. They'd be so far removed from everything and everyone in the noisy, bustling city they might feel as though they were the only two people on earth. She'd only have him, and he'd be all she would need.

And so, he takes out money from their savings, puts a payment down on that empty cottage from his childhood, and takes a month's leave from work to take a chance and move her out there.

It's a desperate move, and he's not even sure it will work, but he misses the girl he married. (The girl who tried to warn him, his traitorous mind thinks.)

* * *

"_You have never looked lovelier, darling."_

"_Well, it's all downhill from here, Mr. Kirkland, let me tell you. Now that you're officially stuck with me, get ready for a lifetime of old t-shirts and wrinkly pajama bottoms."_

"_I think I'll survive, especially as there's nothing to keep me from exercising my rights as your husband and tearing your clothes off you whenever I wish."_

"_Arthur, stop that! We can't talk about stuff like that during our first dance. We're supposed to be talking about lovey-dovey stuff."_

"_Are we? How frightfully dull."_

"_I know, right? Oh, but is this — how did you find a piano version of the 'Hymne __à__ l'Amour?'"_

"_I had to kill a Frenchman for it. Stuck his head on a pike and quite enjoyed it. It's your favorite, after all."_

"_You're my favorite."_

"_Oh, darling. I promise, for the rest of our lives — "_

"_Wait!"_

"_What?"_

"_You saying that! I remember now. The joke starts like this — how many times does a Frenchman laugh at a joke? It's three times. The first is when — "_

"_Are you shitting me?"_

"_Arthur, don't laugh! We're supposed to be lovey-dovey during our first dance, remember? We'll ruin all the pictures."_

* * *

He doesn't know if she's getting better, but he does see a difference in her. And surely a difference isn't too much to ask for.

She's taking an interest in things again, asking questions and telling stories. They go down to the river some days and swim in the shallow part, and she cackles loudly when he yelps and grumbles about how cold the water is. She rearranges the flowers and heavy stones in their new garden, so much larger and more inviting than the one they left behind in the city; she sings enthusiastically while she pulls up weeds, not caring to stop and consider how terribly off-key her voice is. She bakes, and it feels like a never-ending holiday, the sharp spices hanging in the air and the house comfortably warm around them. In the dark of the night she reaches out for him and lets him make love to her like it was their first time.

One Sunday afternoon she comes up to him as he's arranging his books on a shelf in the library. She proudly offers him a tray of gingerbread biscuits, and he takes two.

"You've got to go back to work tomorrow, don't you?" she asks.

"I'm afraid so."

She sighs, tenderly gazing at his face as he chews. She loves the lines of his lips, the strength of his jaw, the curve of his throat. For a moment, she nearly despairs — does he know how much she loves him? Truly?

"I'll miss you. I wish there was a way you could stay with me here for just one more day, at least. I feel better when I'm with you."

"It's a bit longer of a drive for me, darling, but I shan't be that far away. You'll be the only thing on my mind tomorrow. And — I'll always come back home to you." He threads his fingers through her hair and holds the back of her head. "You know that."

She nods. "I know. But — I shouldn't worry so much, should I? I've actually felt really good about things lately, because you've taken such good care of me while we've been here. And I've finally decided what I should do."

His eyebrows fly up in surprise. "You have?" he asks, trying not to sound too excited, and failing.

"Yes," she says, shyly glancing away, a small little smile playing upon her lips. "It's been something I've been thinking about a lot lately. I can't just keep sitting around, doing _nothing."_

She reveals her real smile to him then, crinkles her eyes and shows him her dimples, and the sight of it after going so long without seeing it makes his heart flutter.

She leans over to kiss his cheek and lets her lips linger warmly against his skin for a moment before covering his mouth with her own. He's a little stunned at first, but he's never been unresponsive to his wife's touch, and as she deepens the kiss he snakes an arm around her waist and holds her close.

She winks when she pulls away, and as he watches her walk out of the library, he thinks he sees her shaking her hips a little more than is strictly necessary. She used to walk like that when they were first dating because she knew he was watching. He wonders if she'll tease him about it later, just like she used to back then.

He hopes she will. Oh, how he hopes and hopes and _hopes._

(Hope floats, they say, but some emotions weigh more than others. Marie knows this better than anyone. It's time Arthur learned as well.)

* * *

Monday afternoon, Arthur decides to spend his lunch break at home. It's a long drive, twice as long as when they lived in the city and twice as expensive to fill up the petrol; he'll only get to spend about 10 minutes with Marie, if even that, before he'll have to turn around and drive back.

But it will be worth it, because he missed her more than he expected he would today.

He calls out for her as he walks in through the kitchen's back door, but not a single sound in the house greets him.

A crisp envelope addressed to him, written in Marie's handwriting, waits for him on the kitchen table. Suddenly uneasy, but not quite sure why, he picks it up and opens it.

_I can't believe it took me this long to finally get it right. Are you ready? Here it is: How many times does a Frenchman laugh at a joke? Three. The first time is when he first hears it. The second time is when it's explained to him, and the third is when he finally understands the joke. Ta-dah! I hope it was worth the wait._

He chuckles softly and shakes his head.

_I've kept you waiting for so long, baby, but I finally figured something out. The thing is — this is who I am. We can wait and wait and wait, but there's no one else here. Can you get better if you're never really sick? Because I'm not sick. I'm just me. And I don't think I really like that._

_Oh, Arthur. My dear, dear Arthur. I love you so much. I wish I could've shown you how much, because it's a lot. Baby, I want you to know this wasn't your fault — none of it was. You're a good man and you did nothing but love me and take care of me. But I've decided I just can't be a burden to you anymore..._

The letter falls from his hand as he runs out of the house, knocking over a chair in his hurry. As he runs down the road he thinks of her turning the heavy garden rocks over and over in her hands, weighing them; he remembers how he thought nothing of it when she curiously asked him exactly how deep the deepest part of the river was.

And he knows what's already happened — he knows, somehow, how he's going to find her — he _knows, _and it hurts, and he can't breathe — but still, he runs as fast as his legs will carry him to her.

* * *

"_There are parts of me I don't want you to see."_

"_I'm afraid it's a tad late for that now, my love. You said it yourself — you're officially stuck with me."_

"_Really ugly parts. Black parts that I can't even explain to myself, much less to anyone else."_

* * *

He shouts for her.

* * *

"_Arthur, do you ever take me seriously when I say stuff like this?"_

"_Of course I do. But do you take me seriously? I'll wait with you through all this, and I'll wait for you. I'm not perfect, either, you know."_

"_Baby?"_

"_Yes?"_

"_Thank you for staying with me."_

"_I — well — that's preposterous. You don't have to thank me. I enjoy you and your company, is all. But keep in mind you gave me quite the chase in the beginning and wanted nothing to do with me until I wore you down."_

"_That's not true! You can't even say that without smirking. But sometimes I just feel so weird and lost, and you always — "_

"_My darling — no more of that. Enjoy your honeymoon in Paris. Besides — you could never be so lost that I couldn't find you."_

* * *

The sheep farmer comes to see what all the commotion is about, and helps him look for her.

* * *

"_Do you know — I've come to the conclusion that you cannot tell a joke to save your life."_

"_Just you wait. You'll throw a parade for me when I finally remember how the one about the Frenchman goes."_

"_I'd wait my entire life to hear you finally get that one right, darling. Don't lose heart. You'll remember it one day and I'm sure I'll cry from laughing so hard."_

* * *

"No," he frets, rocking her back and forth and cradling her head against his chest. "No, no, _no._ You don't understand, Mr. Smith. You have to help me find her ring. She — she wouldn't want to be without it."

* * *

_Arthur, I tried to warn you. But all the same, I'm glad you didn't listen._

.

_The End_

.

Édith Piaf's "Hymne à l'Amour" is one of my favorite songs. You can find the original, as well as several piano versions, on YouTube, and there are English translations of the French lyrics on the Internet as well. You can find Eddie Izzard's Pierre skit from his "Dress To Kill" special floating around on YouTube as well.

Inspired by both F. Scott Fitzgerald's "Tender is the Night" (a psychiatric doctor falls in love with and marries one of his patients; the better and healthier she becomes, the worse he gets) and "The Hours" (Virginia Woolf, who had a history of mental illness from a young age, committed suicide by filling her pockets with rocks and drowning herself).


End file.
